But to date, repairs originally required by 2008 have not begun at the building housing the facility's 91 patient beds, intensive care unit, surgery, radiology and other services, state records show.

It has a 31.8 percent chance of collapsing in a major earthquake, regulators say. State law requires hospitals to have a collapse risk of 1.5 percent or lower.

Kindred, a for-profit hospital chain based in Kentucky, has known since at least 2004 that the building poses a significant earthquake risk, according to records obtained under the state Public Records Act.

In 2005, Kindred got state approval for a "retrofit/replacement project" to be finished in 2006. The project never happened. Kindred instead received an extension for the fixes until 2013, records show.

It qualified because a new law granted extra time to hospitals that could show that the 2008 deadline "will result in a loss of health care capacity" not provided by other hospitals nearby.

Two years later, Kindred approached regulators again, asking them to take a second look at the building. They rejected the request after calculating the collapse risk at 31.8 percent.

Now Kindred says it plans to retrofit the building by late 2012. The plan would boost the building's sturdiness only one grade, from a "1" to a "2" on the state's five-point scale, in which "1" is the worst grade and "5" is the best.

Kindred eventually plans to boost its grade to "5," officials said in a statement, describing it as a "continuing process."